Efficient Computation of Phonocardiographic Signal Analysis in Digital Signal Processor Based System

This article presents a real-time and cost effective system for the heart auscultation monitoring and hearing. The system design comprises of a Phonocardiographic pre-amplifier circuit with a TMS 320C6711 Digital Signal Processor Starterkit (DSK) and its associated software. The Phonocardiogram signal from the pre-amplifier circuit is acquired through the CODEC input of the DSK and subjected to various signal processing techniques. Frequency analysis and component analysis are performed to identify the normal and pathological heart sound patterns using Short Time Fourier Transform (STFT), spectrogram display and Wavelet transform techniques respectively. To study the performance of the system, the analysis of heart sound patterns for various diseases were conducted. Finally the computational efficiency of the systemwas calculated by comparing the execution time of the algorithms in the proposed DSPPCG (Digital Signal Processor based Phonocardiogram) system with the PCPCG (PC based Phonocardiogram) system.